On Sept. 10, just before the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Raul Lopez of Luar held a show in the plaza of Rockefeller Center. The 100-plus American flags that normally surround the sunken skating rink were replaced with flags featuring the Luar logo, and the designer’s runway ran just in front of the building housing “American Progress,” the famous mural by José María Sert.
This was not long after Elena Velez issued a rebel yell of a collection inspired by Joan of Arc, Calamity Jane and the women “who define the spirit of a country in disunion.” Think the armor of cowboy corsetry and many more wearable clothes than usual. And just days after Area celebrated its 10th anniversary with a collection that riffed on the slogan “Bans Off Our Bodies,” with silver handprints speckling greatcoats and bodysuits and coats made from so many bristling spikes that they looked as if they’d impale anyone who dared get too close.
Politics has invaded New York fashion in a way never seen before on the runways. Not in a Republican-Democratic way or in the decorative way the red, white and blue chairs at Monse nodded to its coup in dressing Michelle Obama for her Democratic National Committee speech. (The Monse collection, full of striped and sequined polos, was very good.) But in the way the issues that are driving the bigger conversation — immigration, economic inequity, diversity, freedom to make your own decision about your body — are shaping the clothes.
Designers are putting their positions, not their hearts, on their sleeves, and it is happening not on the fringes but in the labels that seem increasingly core to the identity of New York fashion itself. And they are showcasing their statements in the monuments of the establishment — not just at 30 Rock but on Wall Street, courtesy of Willy Chavarria and City Hall, thanks to Who Decides War, which held its show almost next door.
That in turn is redefining the very idea of what American fashion means in ways that have little to do with what is happening in Europe. There, traditional ideas of “beauty” and “fantasy” and “heritage” still dominate, and conventional wisdom has it that designers should keep politics out of the products, lest they put off potential consumers.
(In the past, when designers like Vivienne Westwood and Katherine Hamnett started proselytizing through fashion, they were generally dismissed as batty, if benign, eccentrics. Even Maria Grazia Chiuri’s feminist sloganeering at Dior is more accessorized than confrontational — after all, women’s fashion, by definition, is to a certain extent about female empowerment.)
And it is redefining it in ways that have only a smidgen to do with the old stereotypes of American fashion, which centered on sportswear and values like “functionality” and “ease,” a pledge of allegiance to white-collar chic. That ethos is still around, in the shrugged-on shirtdresses, nautical knits and grommeted carwash skirts of Proenza Schouler, the pert black and white polka-dot cocktail frocks of Wes Gordon at Carolina Herrera, and the black leather bombers and arty body-swallowing volumes of Khaite, where Catherine Holstein still seems to be looking for an original idea.
Those clothes are assured and familiar. But they don’t have the urgency and relevance of, say, Luar’s sweeping alien-meets-ecclesiastes trench coats, with their hoods wired to jut out behind, his slinky ribbed knits that cover the body from top to toe, and his high-glam organza sweats.
Nor do they convey the unexpected beauty of the collaged, destroyed denim at Who Decides War, where Ev Bravado and Tela D’Amore’s foray into women’s wear was most successful in the form of shredded ball gowns that turned the language of Victoriana inside out, and leather jackets from a Pelle Pelle collaboration with Mount Rushmore stitched on the back. Not Mount Rushmore as we know it, though, but “our own Mount Rushmore,” Mr. Bravado said, referring to Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass and Barack Obama.
As the soundtrack went at Collina Strada, “Oh yea, Collina cares alotta/Global Warming’s a big deal/Don’t act like it’s not real,” the words a backdrop to Hillary Taymour’s vegan version of boho deluxe. She blended romantic airy chiffon and thrift-store fabulous without ever taking itself too seriously (though the addition of shoes and sunglasses show that business is another matter).
The point is, Mike Eckhaus of Eckhaus Latta said during the label’s dinner party-show, “Everyone just wants to be able to express themselves.”
That’s the same thing Michael Kors said backstage before his “Ripley”-on-the-Med show of full floral skirts and popped-collar shirts, oversize jackets and leather lace. But Eckhaus Latta, rather than limiting the message to hemlines (shorts, asymmetric, long, whatever you want) and necklines (sweetheart, portrait, bra top) à la Kors, gave its guests agency over the collection.
Which is to say, Mr. Eckhaus and Zoe Latta invited their clan in to pick pieces and let them style themselves and then dared them to vamp their way down a catwalk situated between tables in their new obi-waist pants and “hugging” shirts (with mismatched fronts and backs with straps cut to clasp each other like arms). As if to acknowledge: Our bodies, our clothes. They looked as though they were having a great time.
That’s why Coach’s commercialization of Gen Z adulting and D.I.Y. in the form of sticker-bedecked bags and doodled tees paired with borrowed-from-your-grandfather’s-closet suiting felt so emptied of meaning, despite the sure-to-sell-like-hot-cakes coin-purse bags and sneaker toys — cars and old cassette tapes — that attach to the tongue of the shoes. (The khakis and beat-up shrunken leathers upcycled from consumer waste should have staying power.)
And it is why Willy Chavarria’s poetic “América” show was so powerful — and so ambitious. Held in an empty office building by the New York Stock Exchange, with a giant American flag as a backdrop and an opening song from the musical group Yahritza y Su Esencia, the show focused on the clothes of the service worker and the laborer, and treated them like couture.
Bomber jackets had balloon sleeves. Khaki pants had the pleats and volumes of palazzos; plaid shirts, the sharp, structured shoulders of Joan Crawford. A collaboration with Adidas (modeled by the sprinter Noah Lyles, among others) transformed shorts and track jackets with Victorian ruffles, and paired red roses with the three red stripes — as well as nods to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the first athlete to have his own Adidas shoe, and words like “Chicano” and “justice.” Oh, and there was some merch made for the American Civil Liberties Union, modeled by Mr. Chavarria himself when he took his bow.
As a designer, he is trying to reframe the look of the country. That’s not a trend; it’s a transformation.
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